Shortcut Problems (Excel 2000 SR-1)

I keep a number of shortcuts in my Start Menu. Yesterday I launched one that, for some reason, had lost its Excel icon and was just showing the default file icon. Windows said that it could not find Excel.exe, so I "browsed" the location. Excel opened, the file opened, and then it gave me an error message "You cannot open two documents with the same name..." All my Excel links are misbehaving like this now. It's as if Excel is trying to open two copies of the file every time a shortcut is used. This is affecting only Excel, and none of my other installed Office products. I think it may have something to do with the file associations (and thus a Windows 98 problem and not Excel), but everything looks normal.

Re: Shortcut Problems (Excel 2000 SR-1)

I managed to "fix" the problem without diving into the registry this time. I went into the File Types listing and removed the .XLS extension from the list and then opened a worksheet from Explorer. Explorer let me re-associate the file to Excel and the double-loading errors went away (although I lost the "Print" and other right-click options). Then today I tracked down the installation CD and did a "Find & Repair" to get everything back to normal again. <img src=/S/smile.gif border=0 alt=smile width=15 height=15>

Still, I have no idea what went wrong in the first place, but given that it's Microsoft Office running on Microsoft Windows chances are that it'll happen again. <img src=/S/sarcasm.gif border=0 alt=sarcasm width=15 height=15>

Re: Shortcut Problems (Excel 2000 SR-1)

I ran the /regserver command, and it appears to do the same as Excel's (Office in general's?) "Detect and Repair" Help menu option. Is there any difference in using the /regserver command switch versus the "Detect and Repair" option from the Help menu or even from the install CD's Setup?

Sidenote -- the "Detect and Repair" command would not function from within Excel, but it could be run from other Office applications though I did the repair using the install CD.

Re: Shortcut Problems (Excel 2000 SR-1)

One of the main differences is that the regserver fix does not require the install CD. However, all it does is set XL's registry settings back to their default values. The Detect and Repair will fix other things, like missing DLL files, but requires the install CD to work.

Re: Shortcut Problems (Excel 2000 SR-1)

Now that is an important distinction! <img src=/S/smile.gif border=0 alt=smile width=15 height=15>

Where do you find out about all of these different command line switches? Is there a master listing of them available somewhere? I've looked in the help files, and from their lack of documentation I'd almost think Microsoft didn't want us knowing about them! <img src=/S/sarcasm.gif border=0 alt=sarcasm width=15 height=15>

Re: Shortcut Problems (Excel 2000 SR-1)

Ah, the old "Hoard Knowledge" trick -- don't tell people what you know until they have to come begging for it, thus receiving a heady rush of exhilaration from the power trip. <img src=/S/grin.gif border=0 alt=grin width=15 height=15>

Re: Shortcut Problems (Excel 2000 SR-1)

MS used to give this info when they offered "technical" courses on the application side. The MOUS courses I've seen really don't go into depth.
Sigh!
The lack of in-depth courses available for applications is real sticking point for me. Of course, it isn't just Microsoft. WordPerfect also provides (I've gotta admit I don't know if they do currently) "technical" style training on its' products. They've kept it pretty quiet tho'.
Of course, the reason behind this is money. MS (and perhaps others) never made enough money selling their technical apps courses to make it worth while. So they've thrown all their efforts into BackOffice Technical courses.